1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to server room thermal management devices and more specifically it relates to an electronics equipment heat exchanger system for thermally managing the electronic devices of a computer server and the exhaust air emitted from the computer server.
2. Description of the Related Art
Any discussion of the prior art throughout the specification should in no way be considered as an admission that such prior art is widely known or forms part of common general knowledge in the field.
A server room is comprised of one or more computer servers used by a company to perform various functions (e.g. web hosting, cluster computing). Some server rooms are comprised of a “server farm” which includes a significant number of computer servers (e.g. 100, 500, 1,000). Performance in any computer server is typically limited by the performance of the server room's cooling systems rather than by the performance of the computer servers. The design of the server room is important to ensure that heat generated by the computer servers is efficiently removed which includes thermally managing the electronic components directly and by thermally managing the air within the server room through an HVAC system.
Liquid thermal management systems are becoming the desired choice to thermally manage the computer servers within a server room. Single-phase liquid thermal management systems (e.g. liquid cold plates) and multi-phase liquid thermal management systems (e.g. spray cooling, pool boiling, flow boiling, jet impingement cooling, falling-film cooling, parallel forced convection, curved channel cooling and capillary pumped loops) have been in use for years for thermally managing various types of heat producing devices. Spray cooling technology is being adopted today as the most efficient option for thermally managing electronic systems. U.S. Pat. No. 5,220,804 entitled High Heat Flux Evaporative Spray Cooling to Tilton et al. describes the earlier versions of spray technology. U.S. Pat. No. 6,108,201 entitled Fluid Control Apparatus and Method for Spray Cooling to Tilton et al. also describes the usage of spray technology to cool a printed circuit board.
One problem with conventional server room thermal management systems is that the HVAC systems are typically designed to support only up to a pre-specified number of watts per square foot (e.g. 100 watts per square foot) a formula which makes it difficult to anticipate (1) future additions of computer servers and (2) future advances in computer servers that produce increased heat. In addition, while liquid thermal management systems are highly efficient in removing heat from computer services, they do not remove all heat generated by a computer server (e.g. from the non-liquid cooled components) thereby still requiring an efficient air conditioning system to maintain a desired air temperature within the server room. If the HVAC system cannot thermally manage the air within the server room, then additional computer servers cannot be added to the server room when space is available.
Because of the costs and difficulties of maintaining a server room with a larger number of computer servers at a desired average room temperature, there is a need for efficiently thermally managing the electronic components within a computer server and the surrounding air.